I believe that the unit plan on Frida Kahlo that we designed integrated technology in a meaningful way. As a teacher, I found the TPCK model useful in reminding me that technology must be purposeful in the lesson, rather than using technology for technology's sake. Its integration into the lesson ended up incorporating important visuals that a student needed in order to understand the artist's work and life experiences.
The unit was successful in inspiring students to engage individually with the content and reflect creatively without worrying about what others might think of his or her answers. For that reason, I really liked the influence technology had on the learner's experience. It was also successful to assign various credible internet sources for students to explore. The student was able to see varying perspectives that way. The TPCK model requires that the teacher come up with new ways to integrate technology within what they are already teaching in the classroom. I enjoyed the creativity that we put into figuring out how to convey the content knowledge. With all of the new ideas that have been presented in class, we had a good repertoire to choose from.
Something that we need to work on is the way that we present the lesson to our "students". I did not totally understand what was expected of us when we got up to present this lesson, so it seems that we should have stayed in character as the teachers more and covered only one lesson. We were attempting to walk our colleagues through the highlights of the unit and were critiqued for not having completed the presentation assignment properly. In the future, I will be sure that I know exactly what is expected of me before I prepare a project like this.
I like your summary of the TPCK model and how it can help teachers.
ReplyDeleteI suspect, from my work with teachers at my school, that one of the big obstacles to using more new technologies in instruction, is the extra difficulty of making it all work smoothly. Incorporating websites and PPTs and e-sheets and more requires a lot of extra planning and preparation (and one might well ask to what degree all of the extra work is really worth it). One of the main goals of having to present a sample lesson (rather than describe it), to practice / appreciate the planning and execution aspects of tech-integrated lessons. Which I think you do.
jd